


the spinout

by windfalling



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 17:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14406612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfalling/pseuds/windfalling
Summary: The problem with being stuck in a tiny bunker with your sort-of-ex and his not-so-dead wife, Lucy thinks, is that there is nowhere to hide.Lucy, on coping and moving on. [Post-2x05]





	the spinout

**Author's Note:**

> to start: this takes place post-2x05 (and is canon-compliant until then) and diverges to include their conversation from the sneak peak in 2x06. lucy also mentions that she's claustrophobic a couple times in the series, and i kind of took that and ran with it... a lot. 
> 
> disclaimer: this was also written before 2x06, and i'd fully intended to have it up before then and before canon bulldozes over it, and obviously that, uh, did not happen, but all of it has been written before _i've_ watched the episode, but having seen a few posts--i can safely say that my take on the flynn/lucy conversation and dynamic post-journal argument is garbage and canon is so much better, i acknowledge this, but i'll leave it here for your judgment. i hope you enjoy either way!

 

 

The problem with being stuck in a tiny bunker with your sort-of-ex and his not-so-dead wife, Lucy thinks, is that there is nowhere to hide.

Not that she's running. She isn't. On her good days, she's happy that he's happy, he's with his wife (who is so lovely and friendly and kind that she can't even hate her), and sometimes, she means it. But seeing her at the table with Wyatt in the morning for breakfast, or on the couch watching television together, or worse, having to see the chair propped up by their door—that's just masochism.

Wyatt doesn't seem to grasp that he's making it worse every time he tries to include her in the conversation. He wants things to go back to the way they were, and she gets it. She misses hanging out with them, misses her boys, and she would love nothing more than to be able to laugh and joke with them like before. But it's one thing to remain friends with your ex and part on relatively amiable terms—it's another to be stuck with him and his wife in close quarters for the indefinite future.

Rufus, who is caught between them both, finally tells Wyatt to give her time, which she only knows because Jiya told her so. They've done that thing where they stop talking when she walks by, so she knows that they're talking about  _her_ , and they get That Look on their face, and Jiya tries to talk to her about it, but Lucy would literally rather hear her mother condemn her to death again than talk about her feelings (which is just another thing she's trying not to think about).

So if she's started to drink a little more, if she leaves first at all their meals, if she spends most days staring at the exit to the bunker and wondering what it would be worth to just  _leave_ —

She closes her eyes. Thinks of the soldier and the kickback of the gun against her shoulder. Of a broken man with his thumb resting on a trigger, ready to end it all. Of a promise she will make in the future.

No, she isn't running.

 

 

 

 

Lucy starts eating at odd times.

Sometimes it'll be bearable, if Rufus and Jiya are there, or even Agent Christopher and Connor. But other times she feels more like a fifth wheel, and when the walls start to loom larger and closer in her vision, she knows she has to leave.

So she pretends to sleep in to miss breakfast, or she'll wake up before dawn. She makes whatever excuse she can to take a late lunch, and she'll wait until most of them have cleared before tiptoeing into the kitchen at midnight for dinner.

Flynn's there most nights, a book and reading light in hand. She's always braced for him to make some sardonic comment about the state of her life, always braced for a fight (and maybe that's what she wants, what she's looking for), but he hasn't, yet. Sometimes she catches him looking at her as if there were something he wanted to say, but then it passes, and he wisely chooses to say nothing instead.

“Can't sleep?" he finally says one night, all casual and nonchalant, and she replies, “Nope," in the same tone, determinedly focused on making her sandwich, not looking at him.

He drums his fingers against the table when she doesn’t say anything else. “Neither can I, most of the time.”

“I’ve noticed," is all she says before she takes her sandwich with her and sits far, far away. It's for his own good, really. There's nothing she can say right now that isn't meant to bruise.

 

 

 

 

Lucy’s dreams belong to her drowning.

They’ve gotten creative over the years. At first, it was always the car, always the locked door, the unbreakable glass. Now, she finds herself looking at her reflection, hazy in the uneven water. Everywhere she should be, she is gone; there is nothing but her mother’s features in her own, her mother’s eyes looking back at her, her mother’s hands around her throat, dragging her under.

 _You're nothing like your mother_ , Flynn had said, and she knows this, she does, but it's getting harder to remember.

 

 

 

 

The fourth night Lucy runs into him, there's a bowl of soup, a plate of scrambled eggs, and a sandwich made just the way she likes it sitting on the table, clearly meant for her.

“What's this?"

Flynn shrugs. “Canned minestrone. It’s the best I could do under the circumstances. Your sandwiches looked, quite frankly, disgusting." He grimaces at the thought of it.

She stares at him.

“I haven’t see you at dinner," he says evenly.

She flushes. It isn't as if she's been hiding the fact that she's been eating more than just a late-night snack. But that Flynn is the one to notice, to do something like this—to be  _nice_ to her—god, she must look more pathetic than she thinks.

She doesn't move, caught between hunger and pride. Flynn sighs, and his mouth gives an irritable twitch. “Just eat the damn eggs, Lucy."

She scowls at him, but she sits at the table. She mutters a quiet, “Thank you," and he says, “Pardon?" but there's a smug turn to his mouth that makes her want to fling something at him.

“Don't push me, Flynn."

“Or what, you'll stab me with your fork?"

“Now there's an idea," she says, and he laughs.

 

 

 

 

Flynn doesn't say anything the first time she sits next to him at their next meeting about Rittenhouse and their future missions, or when she catches him reading a book in their makeshift living room alone and takes the chair next to him. She'd half expected him to make a comment about how desperate she must be, if she were running to him for safe harbour. But he's oddly more subdued, lately.

Oh, he still snarks at them all when they talk about their Rittenhouse theories, or the practicalities of sending him on future missions, and so on. He'll say things to bait them, push his limits as far as they'll go. But not about her and Wyatt.

When he finally does bring up the subject, she doesn't react well. Lucy likes those nights where neither of them said anything and they sat in mutually agreed-upon silence; she does  _not_  like the tiptoeing around her, the hesitancy in his voice when he tries to get her to talk, how gentle it goes when he talks about the journal, about them.

She wants that snarl on his face back, that quick-trigger anger, all his composure undone. That was easier to face, to push back on. But this, him trying to be all helpful and sincere and  _kind_  even in his arrogant presumption—she doesn’t know what to do with it.

_What do you want from me, Flynn?_

She's lashing out. Some part of her knows this, the one that sees how quickly his face falls, how easy he is to read, all his emotions written in his eyes, the spasm of his hands. The other part looks away. That's easier, too.

 

 

 

 

She’d thought she was being brave, driving down that road back home all armed with teenage recklessness. She’d rehearsed the speech a thousand times in a thousand different ways, knowing it would make no difference: Lucy was never going to be what her mother wanted.

She wonders how different things would be, if her car hadn’t slipped, if she’d made it through, if she’d become the black sheep of her family then, instead of now. She wonders if it even matters.

Some part of her still feels like she’s there, sitting in her car with her hands on the wheel, waiting for the spinout.

 

 

 

 

The meeting starts off as usual: Wyatt is arguing against the idea of Flynn coming on another mission; that he doesn’t understand, not when he’s back; that Flynn’s a liability; that he can’t be trusted. Flynn pushes back, both of them speaking over each other, but it isn’t anything out of the ordinary until brings up Salem. Wyatt says,  _you couldn’t protect her,_  and she sees the words land as he’d intended, sees the image of a man standing over the grave of his wife and child, sees Flynn’s face twist and the live-wire tension in him coil tight—

“He saved my life," Lucy snaps. Wyatt falls silent, and part of her regrets the surprised hurt on his face, but there are only so many times she can ask him to trust her judgment. “We wouldn't let him have a weapon, remember? How was he supposed to help us in a fight when we didn't let him in the first place?"

“She's right," Rufus says, begrudgingly. “I’m not saying I completely trust the guy, but we wouldn't have made it back without him."

“He's  _on our side_. He took out three sleeper agents when you guys left him behind, and you know he hates Rittenhouse just as much as we do. I honestly don't know what more he can do to prove his allegiance."

In the missing beat where Flynn's retort should be, there is only silence, and she looks over to see him just staring at her. She can’t read his face, which bothers her, because he’s rarely made an effort to hide how he feels.

She stares right back. “I trust him,” she says, and means it.

 

 

 

 

Lucy finds him later, after midnight, standing in front of him while he's sitting on the couch.

“It is awkward," she says, and it feels like pulling teeth.

Flynn blinks up at her.

“Between me and Wyatt," she clarifies, unnecessarily. Her arms are folded across her chest and she kind of wants the floor to open up beneath her and swallow her whole. “It's awkward and I hate it and I say I’m happy for them and I’m trying to be, I really am, but sometimes I hate them, and maybe that makes me an awful person, but—“

“Not at all," he interrupts, voice low and insistent.

“—there it is. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

it's the shittiest apology she's ever given, and it isn't even that. But he claimed to know her better than she knows herself (she still doubts that, but whatever), so she hopes he recognises it for what it is.

“Not quite," he says quietly, but his eyes have gotten all soft on her again, and she struggles not to look away. “But I'll take it. And I… apologise, too, if I overstepped. If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t pry.”

She exhales and nods sharply. “Okay. Good." Before he can say anything else, she plops down next to him, stealing the remote from his hands. “It’s my turn to choose,” she declares.

He narrows his eyes. “I don’t think so. You chose last time—“

“— _you_ turned it off—“

“—because you wouldn’t stop  _criticising_ the damn film—“

“What, you didn’t appreciate my historical fun facts? Come on. Let’s not pretend you wouldn’t do the same if we watched—“

 

 

 

 

Her hands are shaking again. She doesn’t know what set it off. The last time it’d been this bad, they’d been in  _Nazi Germany_ , and she thinks that justifies a little panic.

Maybe it’s the bunker, but she’d been able to talk herself down from that one. She’d gone through the security protocols, the fastest path to the exit, she knows that she can leave if she  _really_  wanted to, so even though the ceiling was too low and the rooms were tinier than her freshman dorm room, she’s fine, she can get out.

She doesn’t want to think it’s because of Wyatt, even though she feels like she’s suffocating, sometimes, when she hears their voices, when she sees them, when she has to paste on a smile and pretend that everything’s okay—because that would truly be a new low for her.

Maybe it’s nightmares, or her mother, or a combination of all of the above, but either way, she has to do  _something_.

When the room starts to spin a little, she sits down on the floor, closes her eyes, and rests her forehead against her bent knees. If things were normal, if she weren’t  _trapped_  here, she’d be able to run it off like usual, but if they haven’t noticed something was off before, they would know that she’s truly lost it when she starts to run laps around the bunker.

Lucy focuses on breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth, in through her nose—

Footsteps come around the corner, then halt.  _Please be Jiya, please be Jiya, or even Rufus—_

“Lucy?”

She exhales.

Flynn kneels down in front of her, crouching so they’re at eye level. His face is drawn tight with concern, and she realises that she’s actually  _relieved_  to see him.

“It’s nothing,” she says, and his eyebrows lift. “Really, I’m good. I just felt a little dizzy, but I’m fine now.”

“Dizzy?” He sounds alarmed. He presses the back of his hand to her forehead, and she startles back, nearly smacking her head against the wall in the process. “You don’t seem to have a fever,” he murmurs, and he goes to touch her hands next. They’re ice cold, and she snatches them back as soon as he does.

She’s still shaking, still feels like she’s going to vibrate out of her skin, still has too much energy in every one of her cells—

Flynn pauses. Looks at her. His eyes are suddenly too sharp, too knowing.

“Look, it’s fine,” she says, and gets to her feet without even wobbling. “See? Fine.”

He stands up, too. “Lucy,” he begins, then hesitates. “What can I do? What do you need?” He pauses. “Should I get someone else?”

“ _No_ nono, don’t, I’ll be fine, I’m good,” she insists, even as her body betrays her, because having even  _one_  person witness this is more than enough. “I just need—“

Lucy thinks, suddenly, of that moment Flynn helped buckle her in after Salem, how he'd been so close she could feel his breath against her jaw when he leaned in, and then how gentle his hands had been, after, when he helped clean up the wound on her arm.

“—a distraction."

It's her fault, really. She isn't thinking straight. If she were, she wouldn't have let her eyes drop to his mouth, or let them linger. There's a flash of surprise in his face as he follows the direction of her gaze. The surprise gives away to something more curious, considering, and he takes her face in his hands, doesn’t let her look away. She doesn’t know what her face shows him, or what she wants it to show. She’s lost control, but he’s looking at her so intently that her entire body goes still in what feels more like anticipation than anything else. She’s stopped breathing, stopped shaking, stopped  _thinking_ —

He kisses her. His mouth slants over hers, softer than she was expecting, and her hands curl into the front of his sweatshirt, tugging him closer still. The touch of his tongue on her bottom lip is surprisingly tentative, but when she kisses him back harder, he follows her lead.

Then he pulls away. His hands, cradling her head, slide down to her shoulders before dropping away, and her skin burns where he’s touched her. She gives him a dazed, confused look as her brain struggles to catch up, and he’s searching her face for something, but whatever it is, he doesn’t find it, because something in his expression closes.

“Oh my God.”

She stumbles backward, accidentally tugging him a step forward when she realises that she’s still holding onto his shirt. “Oh—I’m sorry,” she blurts out, flushing a deep red and instantly letting him go.

“Lucy,” he tries to say, but she cuts him off.

He’s looking all worried again, and she’s still feeling as jumpy as she was before—but, she thinks, for an entirely different reason that she  _cannot_  process right now. “I—um, thanks.“

Whatever he was expecting her to say, it definitely wasn’t that. He blinks at her, and she mumbles another apology before pivoting and walking away as fast as possible.

He doesn’t follow.

 

 

 

 

In the bathroom, Lucy looks at herself in the mirror, at the flush in her cheeks and her neck, remembering the scrape of his stubble against her skin, the heat of his hand at the curve of her neck—

She runs the water ice-cold and splashes her face with it and tries not to think about kissing Flynn again.

 

 

 

 

Lucy can't avoid everybody in the bunker, much to her dismay. Flynn and Wyatt tend to stay away from each other as much as possible, which means she ends up running into one of them either way.

Strangely, the awkwardness of being in the same room as Wyatt is much more preferable to her than having to be confronted with Flynn and The Incident again, which she can't seem to be able to process. (She thinks about telling Jiya, but—well, she's dating Rufus. And the moment Lucy opens her mouth to talk about it, the entire bunker will know within the hour. That's just how it goes when you're stuck with the same people 24/7.)

There are a few awkward pauses to navigate through, and she still avoids looking too much at Wyatt and Jessica. But it hurts less than she thought it would.

 

 

 

 

Later, she finds herself in the kitchen alone with Wyatt. Lucy asks about Jessica, how she's doing, how she's adjusting, because that's the only thing she can trust herself to talk about safely with him. Their conversation is stilted, but they're actually  _talking_  for the first time in days, and she finds that she's not as angry as she had been. There's still a dull ache in her chest, but that's fine. She can live with that.

It isn't until Wyatt says, “I’ve missed this, you know,” that she wavers. Her chest tightens, and she's glad that she's already facing away from him, her hand resting on the edge of the cupboard, before she remembers the glass she was reaching for.

It's at that moment that she sees movement in the corner of her eye. When she cranes her neck to see who it was, they’re already gone.

“It was just Flynn," Wyatt says.

Somehow, she feels worse after that.

 

 

 

 

“Lucy,” he finally says to her, two days after The Incident, and after he’d caught her trying to duck around a corner to avoid him. “Stop overthinking it.”

“I am  _not_  overthinking it.”

She is, in fact, trying very hard  _not_  to think about it, because if she does, she starts to think about whether or not she regrets it, and if he regretted it, and what it would mean for her  _not_  to regret it, or what it says about her that she’s already thinking of kissing him again, and that Flynn is the worst possible rebound for her, that she can’t do this again, and she’s an awful person—

Anyway. She’s switched to repressing it deep, deep down.

Flynn hesitates. “If I made you uncomfortable, I—“

“No,” she says quickly. Probably too quickly, judging from the look on his face. “You didn’t. It was fine.”

He rocks back on his heels, considers her for a moment. Then, “Just fine? I’m wounded.”

She flushes and rolls her eyes. “Stop fishing, Flynn. You know how it was.”

He gives her a slow, amused smile. “I have something to show you,” he suddenly says, and then starts walking away.

She follows. “What is it?”

“Patience, Lucy. It’s a surprise.”

“Yeah, I’m, uh, not exactly in the mood for surprises right now.”

He leads her into one of the supply closets, where he starts pushing away rusty drawers and cabinets to reveal a section of the floor. When he starts feeling around the ground and the panels, she says, “Um, if you’re doing what I think you’re doing—”

He tugs at something, and something turns, and then there’s a hidden hatch swinging upon before them, with stairs leading down into a dimly lit tunnel.

She stares at him, wide-eyed. “Have you always known this was here?”

“I knew there couldn’t only be the one exit, even though Agent Christopher says they’ve sealed off all the others. There had to be a back-up, a way to get out in case the main one fails. So I did a little digging, and I found the blueprints of the original building. They’ve set up security measures, but I’ve managed to put them on standby for a short time.”

She gapes at him. “You…  _what?_ ”

“You look so surprised. Give me  _some_  credit, Lucy,” he says, seeming genuinely offended.

“There are… so many questions. I don’t even know where to start.” She shakes her head. “Actually, I do. Why are you showing me this? You could’ve kept it a secret.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Do you really think I’d run, Lucy?” he says quietly.

She thinks of him being dragged off in cuffs, being chained in solitary confinement, and then the deal they’d made. “Well, you aren’t exactly here under your own free will,” she says, but it’s the wrong answer. She can see it on his face.

Flynn changes course. “I know that being stuck here hasn’t been easy for you. I’ve seen you staring at the exit almost every day. And…I know that there was that trail through the forest near your house that you liked to go walk through, whenever you started feeling claustrophobic.”

She doesn’t know what to say.

“Now,” he continues, “I’m not saying it’s a good idea, or that it’s safe, to use this on a regular basis. But every once in a while, when you feel like you need to breathe… it’s here. The stairs are steep, but the actual tunnel itself is wide—ten feet tall, eight feet wide. It runs about fifty metres to the other end.”

She stares down into the tunnel. Fifty metres. If she can handle being stuffed into the trunk of a car with another person, she can do fifty metres. Fifty metres is a swimming pool.

“I’ll be with you the entire time,” he says, and holds out his hand. “Do you trust me?”

Lucy looks at him. “Yes,” she says, and takes it.

 

 

 

 

It’s been days since their last jump, days since she’s been able to breathe fresh air. It’s dark out, with only the moonlight filtering through the trees to guide their path. She tips her head up to stare at the stars, and she spreads her arms out wide and spins and laughs.

“This is a terrible breach of security and I should be mad at you,” Lucy says, but she’s smiling.

Flynn shrugs, unrepentant. “If you really want, you can tell on me and get all the security codes changed.”

“Really, though, if Rittenhouse were here—“

“Then I’d shoot them: problem solved.”

“I’m not even going to ask how you got a gun.”

“To retain some semblance of plausible deniability?”

“Something like that.” She glances over at Flynn, who is watching her with a smile on his face, and to do something like this, for  _her—_

“Thank you, Flynn,” she says. “Really. Even though I still don’t understand  _why_ —" she shakes her head. No, that isn’t the truth. Part of her has always known, she thinks.

“Lucy,” he says softly, and he cups her cheek in his palm, stroking his thumb across her skin. “Don’t you get it?”

She closes her eyes when he brushes his thumb across her lip. When she opens them again, she meets his gaze, and she doesn’t look away. “Yes,” she finally says, and leans in to kiss him. “I do.”


End file.
